Serviceable pretend NYC
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Doctor Who
ernieball5150 — 9 years ago(December 26, 2016 03:23 PM)
Not for a second did any of the episode feel like the events were set in an actual city. I don't think there were even any authentic exterior establishing shots? But it didn't matter. For the type of story they were telling, particularly with the silver-age comics dimension, being set in a glossy soundstage caricature of a big city "worked".
Still, the shot of the American flag on the front of a building at the beginning felt oddly amusing: sort of like if it were a non-American student film opening with a character answering the phone with the phrase, "Hello, this is Dave, in America." I mean, I think they made the right decision, and realistic exterior establishing shots would have felt jarring in juxtaposition with the rest of the episode, but it still produced a bit of an odd feeling. Again, framing the opening of the episode as though it were a panel in a comic helps these compromises feel more like a creative choice rather than an adaptation to production constraints.